Thanks for your reply's Parksie, and I do take your points into consideration.

Any ideas on How ACDSea32 displays its thumbs & full screen picture so quickly?

Is there an API that can display image preview/create small thumbs very quickly?

I have at times seen ACDSee draw the image in low res and then perform a second pass to sharpen it, perhaps this is the method? Any ideas to how this can be done in VB with or without APIs??

Thanks for your reply's